~ Thoughts … deep and otherwise

Some refugees are more equal than others

Anybody detecting a double standard on resettlement of refugees in the United States?

President-not-for-long Barack Obama, again with the stroke of his Executive Order pen and without advance notice, changed the rules regarding U.S. immigration earlier this week.

Obama nullified the “wet foot, dry foot” policy that allowed Cubans for more than 20 years to stay here simply by touching a little sand on the shores of the United States.

Yet Obama’s Refugee Admissions Program continues at full tilt for those fleeing the lethal hostilities in Syria and Iraq. During fiscal 2016 alone, the United States took in nearly 85,000 largely unvetted refugees from that part of the planet. Moreover, U.S. officials predict the number will top 110,000 for fiscal 2017. That is, unless President-elect Donald Trump reverses gears in the program, which could block resettlement of up to 80,000 Mideast refugees.

Compare that to the three years from mid-2013 through mid-2016, when nearly 125,000 Cubans who entered the U.S. legally through so-called Ports of Entry.

But the question arises anew on Obama’s latest immigration shift: Why is he again carrying water on both shoulders in what appears to be a public display of religious bias?

Are Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq more valued than Christian refugees from Cuba?

Or is revocation of “wet foot, dry foot” a heretofore secret part of the not-so-grand bargain Obama struck with the totalitarian and repressive Castro regime to resume diplomatic relations with communist Cuba?

As the elected leader in the land of the free and the home of the brave, how do you legitimately justify saying “yes” to one oppressed group and “no” to another?